21 Apr 2007

The Indo-European (IE) revivalists are up to some crazy plans to get the European Union to adopt "Modern Indo-European" (MIE) as the new European lingua franca. One look at the grammar that they propose and you'll see why their efforts are more doomed than Esperanto[1]:
http://dnghu.org/Indo-European/

They seem to have some interesting re-interpretations of history and IE roots in their pdf too, so I would suggest that after reading it, consult another source of information or hug your local librarian. Remember, question everything.

One of the things that I noticed was the claim that *ec- means 'fast'. First off, the standard spelling you see in any textbook on IE is palatal *ḱ. More importantly however, the root isn't directly based on the attested words which show Greek ōkus, Latin accipiter 'hawk' < *h₁oḱu-petro- and Sanskrit āṣu-. The word is normally shown as *h₁ōḱú- but the initial *h₁ is often omitted for simplicity's sake (read here).

These revivalists also linger on theories that place the earliest Indo-European far more to the east, near the Ural mountains! I personally have some major issues with that considering that if this were true, there would be an abundance of Uralic loans in Indo-European, however nothing conclusive has ever been shown earlier than 2500 BCE when the Indo-Iranian branch of IE was in positive contact with the Finno-Ugric branch of Uralic that had only done so, so it appears, because it had journeyed further south near the Caspian Sea from its original forested areas to the north. The few links that have been identified between the earlier protolanguages IE and Uralic themselves, such as IE *wódr̥ 'water' / Ur *weti 'water', could equally have been inherited in both protolanguages from a common parent language in the remote recesses of prehistory. Plus, the age old dilemma of Indo-European *septm̥ "seven" as a transparent borrowing from Proto-Semitic *sabʕ-at-um 'seven' (masc. form) (basic root *sabʕ-) is something that can't be ignored. So logically, the easterly location just isn't plausible. (On the other hand, I'm not a fan of those who place Indo-European in Turkey either. Eastern Europe suffices if we take into full account the implications of Neolithic sea trade in the Mediterranean to which archaeology attests.)

The original grammar of Indo-European is explained in great detail by Piotr Gasiorowski for those traditionalists out there like myself who don't like to mix protolanguages with protopolitics.

NOTES[1] I should have qualified this statement a long while ago to avoid confusion. What I mean here is "doomed" in the sense of expecting that Esperanto or any other similar language attain the same popularity as other natural languages. Afterall popularity is the name of the game here, isn't it? There's no point marketing an unpopularizable language obviously. Of course, "never say never" and all that, but for everyone's information, Mandarin is estimated to have a little more than a billion speakers in all. I have respect for Esperanto as a fun conlang only and nonetheless appreciate the positive message of global unity that comes with it, but popularizing an artificial language for anything more than entertainment or for an apolitical, humanist message of peace is unconstructive.

I can't comment on MIE, but it seems quite odd to say Esperanto is "doomed." Please rememember that this relatively new language began with just one person, yet is now spoken by more than a million people around the world. This continuing growth has occurred without the help of an army, aneconomy, or Hollywood -- and in spite of mass executions of European Esperanto speakers in the 20th century. To me, at least, that's a remarkable success.

Indeed, it is a success but it's still not enough. Let's nip this silliness in the bud. I do sympathize with the goals of Esperanto's proponents however facts are facts and they can't be ignored because of blind utopianism.

Yes, I'm afraid it's positively doomed to forever be a fad and never a world language unless, to put it succinctly, all 1 billion Mandarin speakers spontaneously combust (see stats here). Even then, you still have English and Spanish to contend with.

Do you honestly expect the Chinese, Japanese and Hindi to all suddenly abandon their languages and writing systems for Esperanto? Hmm... Are you even remotely aware of how well-suited a logographic writing system is to a single nation of several dialects like China? Trust me. It is far too disadvantageous to the Chinese to even consider adopting a Roman alphabet, let alone embracing Esperanto.

Esperanto with a meager 2 million speakers (and only really as a second language at that) is truly statistically insignificant compared to all or to any single one of the exponentially more popular natural languages like Chinese, Spanish, English, Hindi, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, Japanese or German.

If my view is "quite odd", then you may as well dismiss the world as odd. When Esperanto even reaches 200 million first-language speakers (a shocking 100-fold increase), then you will have a case. Until then, let blind faith be your guide.

Glen Gordon said: "Do you honestly expect the Chinese, Japanese and Hindi to all suddenly abandon their languages and writing systems for Esperanto?"

Esperanto is not intended to replace other languages but to serve as a second, bridge language for international communication. No Esperantist would ever expect anyone to abandon his or her native language. Esperanto is a way of helping preserve linguistic diversity, unlike English, which is a "killer" of languages.

Gary Yu: "Esperanto is not intended to replace other languages but to serve as a second, bridge language for international communication."

Yes, exactly, Gary. We agree. It might be surmised superficially that Esperanto has the same flaws as "Modern Indo-European" since its inspiration is limited to Indo-European languages and for a truly global language, one might see a bias in that. However, the great thing about Esperanto is that its proponents largely are motivated by feelings of human camaraderie, a genuine need to bring the world together. So despite that underlying Indo-European linguistic bias in the devised grammar itself, the general impression is just not political and divisive but quite the opposite. The overall spirit of its proponents is I think what has carried Esperanto forward, has made it popular and will continue to popularize it in the future. It's a beautiful message and needs to spread.

I don't get that same feeling from Modern Indo-European which Carlos Quiles heavily politicizes into a must-have for the European Union. Really now? A little grandiose, no? He then scoughs and ignores Nazi misuse of the Indo-European theory in WW2 while simultaneously expecting us to accept his "Esperanto #2" without question or debate. He compares the revival of a very spiritual language like Hebrew as equivalent to his "revival" of his own conlang which has no particular connection to the real Proto-Indo-European being reconstructed. This is all at best terribly naive. Dare I say what it seems at its worst.

Since no one in their right mind writes long attacks like these nor reads them, I do have to wonder if any grant money he reportedly received for this project is in effect funding this personal slander and whether the University of Extremadura might feel a sense of obligation to be concerned of what its representative students are doing to others in its name.

" I have respect for Esperanto as a fun conlang only and nonetheless appreciate the positive message of global unity that comes with it, but popularizing an artificial language for anything more than entertainment or for an apolitical, humanist message of peace is unconstructive."

Unconstructive? I don't know that I'd go that far. It's pretty crappy as far as international auxlangs go and is full of ridiculously parochial features, but among other things it has some extremely valuable literature to its name. I've translated some esperanto poetry here if you're curious.